Oracle Blog

Harry J Foxwell's comments and insights on Cloud Computing

Monday May 05, 2014

Wow! What an amazing collection of new features in Oracle Solaris 11.2!
You can read and hear about it here

I would like to focus on one small but important new feature that allows
you greater choice in Solaris OS virtualization: Kernel Zones.

You create and manage Kernel Zones much like other zones the way you
did it on Solaris 10 or earlier Solaris 11 releases. But now on 11.2
you can run different Solaris 11 kernel versions within non-global
zones, similar to the earlier branded zones idea for Solaris 8
and 9. Solaris 11.2 now provides a platform for Type II hypervisor
like support for different Solaris kernels.

This means that you now have two choices for virtualizing multiple
Solaris kernels on the same physical server. Use Logical Domains (LDoms)
on the T- and M- servers to provide fully separated Solaris kernels
running directly on allocated SPARC cores, or use lighter weight kernel zones hosted
on a single Solaris 11.2 global zone. And this provides intriguing
variations and combinations of virtualization-within-virtualization:
zones within LDoms, for maximum flexibility of application containment
and deployment.

Check out Marcus Flierl's video on Solaris 11.2 virtualization here,
and start thinking about all the new ways to deploy test, dev, and production applications
in virtualized Solaris environments.

About

The purpose of this blog is to highlight and to explore general
issues around "Cloud Computing" -- its benefits, risks, and component technologies -- and how they are evolving. I'll also periodically comment
(of course!) on Oracle's Cloud Computing capabilities, resources, and
cloud-related events. -- Harry J Foxwell, PhD, Principal Consultant for Cloud Computing, Oracle Public Sector HW